I have been here in Kiwi Land for a week now , and my orgenisation has send me here for some work at t the vodafone location in Aucklnad , New Zealand .I am staying here at a place called Elliot ST Apartments , Elliot street , auckland , which is one of the most expensives place in the city , my boss actually takes cares of my living expenses here , i wish that every1's boss in the world should be like him , so generous and care taking kinds :) . It has been just a week here for me , but i dont know why i have started missing people , my near and dear ones so much like i have never missed any time earlier in my life , well .. i am little wmotional sometimes.. ;). Apart from this lil home sickness, i have found this place really awesome , atleast for the week .. :).
The original inhabitants of auckland were Maoris . And in the Maori language, Auckland is known as Tamaki Makau Rau, the city of 100 lovers. It earned this name because it was a place desired by all and conquered by many.
The Auckland region is an antipasto of environments laid out on a huge platter to make one amazing city, boasting three harbours, two mountain ranges, 48 volcanic cones and more than 50 island .Well thats about the distinctive geographical features of the place. The weekend was a great fun for me . I had spent my whole friday night partying and dancing at a place called FU BAR and went back to my apartment in 8:00 A.M in the morning and saturday night i went back to the same place , and you know now i am friends with DJ LogiKal , and the bouncers Peter and Hayden At the FU BAR . May be i will go back to this place again for the next weekend.
Monday, May 23, 2005
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Lal Meri Pat...
My todays blog speaks about one of the songs by the Paksitani Rock band Junoon.
Junoon - The internationally acclaimed South Asian rock band. The band that plays a fusion of western rock and traditional eastern mystical music. This band has performed at venues as varied as the U.N. General Assembly, at the request of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The 9/11 attacks inspired Junoon to compose a song entitled "No More," recounting a New Yorker's sentiments following the WTC attacks and asking for an end to terrorism.
Junoon is not just about a rock group – it is about sanity, it is about harmony, it is about tolerance and more importantly it is about truth. Their agenda is peace, unity, love and brotherhood among mankind. Few rock groups or bands are about all this and more. Salman Ahmed, Brian O’Connell, and Ali Azmat are the trio protesting against the establishment through their music, and at the same time singing of universal love and celebration of life. Their lyrics are inspired by the great Sufi saints, Rumi and Bulleh Shah; and their music by Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix Robert Plant, Jeff Beck, Santana, U2, Beatles, and Queen.
One of the junoon's Ablum Azadi is a eclectic blend of western rock , fusion and eastern mystical songs and music.This one song from Azadi whose lyrics start with the word "Lal Meri Pat" is one of my favourite songs from Junoon. A Part of Pakistan
Called the Province of Sindh , the peole of this place were called as Sufis . Sufis were very unconventional and cool sort of people , who believed in harmony amongst all mankind , peace and tolerance.
"Lal Meri Pat" is an old traditional song revisited by Junoon. Ustad Aashiq Ali, Junoon's tabla player, captivates the audience with his expertise with the tabla, which contributes greatly to further enliven this terrific number. This is one of those songs that will not only get you on your toes, but will also create such a magic that you will be swayed into another world, freeing you from worldly bothers of the present world. I always listen to the song and unwind myself.
The song enchants me with its musical diversity that perhaps accounts for Junoon's eastern and western appeal.It is full of zest, zeal, and enthusiasm, this album definitely rocks!
Junoon - The internationally acclaimed South Asian rock band. The band that plays a fusion of western rock and traditional eastern mystical music. This band has performed at venues as varied as the U.N. General Assembly, at the request of U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The 9/11 attacks inspired Junoon to compose a song entitled "No More," recounting a New Yorker's sentiments following the WTC attacks and asking for an end to terrorism.
Junoon is not just about a rock group – it is about sanity, it is about harmony, it is about tolerance and more importantly it is about truth. Their agenda is peace, unity, love and brotherhood among mankind. Few rock groups or bands are about all this and more. Salman Ahmed, Brian O’Connell, and Ali Azmat are the trio protesting against the establishment through their music, and at the same time singing of universal love and celebration of life. Their lyrics are inspired by the great Sufi saints, Rumi and Bulleh Shah; and their music by Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix Robert Plant, Jeff Beck, Santana, U2, Beatles, and Queen.
One of the junoon's Ablum Azadi is a eclectic blend of western rock , fusion and eastern mystical songs and music.This one song from Azadi whose lyrics start with the word "Lal Meri Pat" is one of my favourite songs from Junoon. A Part of Pakistan
Called the Province of Sindh , the peole of this place were called as Sufis . Sufis were very unconventional and cool sort of people , who believed in harmony amongst all mankind , peace and tolerance.
"Lal Meri Pat" is an old traditional song revisited by Junoon. Ustad Aashiq Ali, Junoon's tabla player, captivates the audience with his expertise with the tabla, which contributes greatly to further enliven this terrific number. This is one of those songs that will not only get you on your toes, but will also create such a magic that you will be swayed into another world, freeing you from worldly bothers of the present world. I always listen to the song and unwind myself.
The song enchants me with its musical diversity that perhaps accounts for Junoon's eastern and western appeal.It is full of zest, zeal, and enthusiasm, this album definitely rocks!
Friday, March 11, 2005
Yesterday,in the evening while returning to my home after the office suddenly like
a strike of lightening some thoughts started running through my mind., that what is
religion all about. I started pondering over this and I felt that religion, is nothing but very much similar to language or dress. We , the people, gravitate toward the practices with which are raised.In the end, we all are proclaiming the same thing that life has a meaning and we are grateful for the power that created us. Whether , one is hndu, christain, muslim, buddhist simply depends on where one is born.Faith , in the divine power is an universal concept, but our methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Ultimately , we all are searching for the truth,that which is greater than ourselves.
a strike of lightening some thoughts started running through my mind., that what is
religion all about. I started pondering over this and I felt that religion, is nothing but very much similar to language or dress. We , the people, gravitate toward the practices with which are raised.In the end, we all are proclaiming the same thing that life has a meaning and we are grateful for the power that created us. Whether , one is hndu, christain, muslim, buddhist simply depends on where one is born.Faith , in the divine power is an universal concept, but our methods for understanding it are arbitrary. Ultimately , we all are searching for the truth,that which is greater than ourselves.
Thursday, February 24, 2005
The assassination of former Lebanese President Hariri did not occur at the hands of a suicide bomber as first speculated. Growing evidence points to the fact that the explosion originated from the middle of the street and from underground. Does anyone else see the global significance of this or is mine the only perceptive mind around? How many times have y'all seen a movie where either the good guys or the bad guys set up a fake road construction site when they are really digging an underground tunnel or robbing a bank or something equally intricate? I can't get over the fact that sometime, within the last few weeks, assassins masquerading as a construction crew were practicing their dark trade in plain sight of the ignorant public. It makes me want to go out and purchase construction cones and keep them in my trunk. Our story doesn't end there. The movie continues. There were apparently six Australian Nationals who were suspected of the assassination. What? Syria would have been my chief suspect of course. If you are easily persuaded by factless speculation you could even go so far as to suspect Israel or the U.S. But an Australian sleeper cell? Chrenkoff reports the Aussies have now been cleared. This entire blog entry serves simply to hammer home one major point (and I am smugly satisfied that I have done so). The absurd plot twists on Alias this season AREN'T as bad as I thought and the series isn't going down the drain. Now excuse me while I go fix the potholes on the street outside my apartment.
Wednesday, February 09, 2005
Nanochips
The First Nanochips
As scientists and engineers continue to push back the limits of chipmaking technology, they have quietly entered into the nanometer realm!
Article By : G. Dan Hutcheson
Abstracted By: Dharmesh Tripathi
Overview/Faster, Better Chips
For most people, the notion of harnessing nanotechnology for electronic circuitry suggests something wildly futuristic. In fact, if you have used a personal computer made in the past few years, your work was most likely processed by semiconductors built with nanometer-scale features. These immensely sophisticated microchips or rather, nanochips are now manufactured by the millions, yet the scientists and engineers responsible for their development receive little recognition.
The recent strides are certainly impressive, but, you might ask, is semiconductor manufacture really nanotechnology? Indeed it is. After all, the most widely accepted definition of that word applies to something with dimensions smaller than 100 nanometers, and the first transistor gates under this mark went into production in 2000. Integrated circuits coming to market now have gates that are a scant 50 nanometers wide. That's 50 billionths of a meter, about a thousandth the width of a human hair.
Having such minuscule components conveniently allows one to stuff a lot into a compact package, but saving space per se is not the impetus behind the push for extreme miniaturization. The reason to make things small is that it lowers the unit cost for each transistor. As a bonus, this overall miniaturization shrinks the size of the gates, which are the parts of the transistors that switch between blocking electric current and allowing it to pass. The more narrow the gates, the faster the transistors can turn on and off, thereby raising the speed limits for the circuits using them. So as microprocessors gain more transistors, they also gain more speed.
The desire for boosting the number of transistors on a chip and for running it faster explains why the semiconductor industry, just as it crossed into the new millennium, shifted from manufacturing microchips to making nanochips. How it
quietly passed this milestone, and how it continues to advance, is an amazing story of people overcoming some of the greatest engineering challenges of our time.
Straining to Accelerate
The microprocessor that powers the computer on which I typed this text, a Pentium 4, contains some 42 million transistors intricately wired together. How in the world was this marvel of engineering constructed? Let us survey the steps.
Before the chipmaking process even begins, one needs to obtain a large crystal of pure silicon. The traditional method for doing so is to grow it from a small seed crystal that is immersed in a batch of molten silicon. This process yields a
cylindrical ingot--a massive gem-quality crystal--from which many thin wafers are then cut.
It turns out that such single-crystal ingots are no longer good enough for the job: they have too many "defects," dislocations in the atomic lattice that hamper the silicon's ability to conduct and otherwise cause trouble during chip
manufacture. So chipmakers now routinely deposit a thin, defect-free layer of single-crystal silicon on top of each wafer by exposing it to a gas containing silicon. This technique improves the speed of the transistors, but engineers have been pushing hard to do even better using something called silicon-on-insulator technology, which involves putting a thin layer of insulating oxide slightly below the surface of the wafer. Doing so lowers the capacitance (the ability to store electrical charge) between parts of the transistors and the underlying silicon substrate, capacitance that would otherwise sap speed and waste power. Adopting a silicon-on-insulator geometry can boost the rate at which the transistors can be made to switch on and off (or, alternatively, reduce the power needed) by up to 30 percent. The gain is equivalent to what one
gets in moving one generation ahead in feature size
IBM pioneered this technology and has been selling integrated circuits made with it for the past five years. The process IBM developed, dubbed SIMOX, short for separation by implantation of oxygen, was to bombard the silicon with oxygen atoms (or rather, oxygen ions, which have electrical charge and can thus be readily accelerated to high speeds). These ions implant themselves deep down, relatively speaking, where they combine with atoms in the wafer and form a layer of silicon dioxide.
One difficulty with this approach is that the passage of oxygen ions through the silicon creates many defects, so the surface has to be carefully heated afterward to mend disruptions to the crystal lattice. The greater problem is that oxygen implantation is inherently slow, which makes it costly. Hence, IBM reserved its silicon-on-insulator technology for its most expensive chips.
A new, faster method for accomplishing the same thing is, however, gaining ground. The idea is to first form an insulating oxide layer directly on top of a silicon wafer. One then flips the oxidized surface over and attaches it onto another, untreated wafer. After cleverly pruning off most of the silicon above the oxide layer, one ends up with the desired arrangement: a thin stratum of silicon on top of the insulating oxide layer on top of a bulk piece of silicon, which just provides physical support.
The never-ending push to boost the switching speed of transistors has also brought another very basic change to the foundations of chip manufacture, something called strained silicon. It turns out that forcing the crystal lattice of silicon to stretch slightly (by about 1 percent) increases the mobility of electrons passing through it considerably, which in turn allows the transistors built on it to operate faster. Chipmakers induce strain in silicon by bonding it to another
crystalline material--in this case, a silicon-germanium blend--for which the lattice spacing is greater. Although the technical details of how this strategy is being employed remain closely held, it is well known that many manufacturers are adopting this approach. Intel, for example, is using strained silicon in an advanced version of its Pentium 4 processor called Prescott, which began selling late last year.
Honey, I Shrunk the Features
Advances in the engineering of the silicon substrate are only part of the story: the design of the transistors constructed atop the silicon has also improved tremendously in recent years. One of the first steps in the fabrication of transistors on a digital chip is growing a thin layer of silicon dioxide on the surface of a wafer, which is done by exposing it to oxygen and water vapor, allowing the silicon, in a sense, to rust (oxidize). But unlike what happens to the steel body of an old car, the oxide does not crumble away from the surface. Instead it clings firmly, and oxygen atoms required for further oxidization must diffuse through the oxide coating to reach fresh silicon underneath. The regularity of this diffusion provides chipmakers with a way to control the thickness of the oxide layers they create.
Semiconductor manufacturers face daunting challenges as they move to extreme ultraviolet lithography, which reduces the wavelengths (and thus the size of the features that can be printed) by an order of magnitude. The prototype systems built so far are configured for a 13-nanometer wavelength. They are truly marvels of engineering--on both macroscales and nanoscales.
Take, for instance, the equipment needed to project images onto wafers. Because all materials absorb strongly at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, these cameras cannot employ lenses, which would be essentially opaque. Instead the projectors must use rather sophisticated mirrors. For the same reason, the masks must be quite different from the glass screens used in conventional lithography. Extreme ultraviolet work demands masks that absorb and reflect light. To construct them, dozens of layers of molybdenum and silicon are laid down, each just a few nanometers thick. Doing so produces a highly reflective
surface onto which a patterned layer of chromium is applied to absorb light in just the appropriate places.
As with other aspects of chipmaking, these masks must be free from imperfections. But because the wavelengths are so small, probing for defects proves a considerable challenge. Scientists and engineers from industry, academe and government laboratories from across the U.S. and Europe are collaboratively seeking solutions to this and other technical hurdles that must be overcome before extreme ultraviolet lithography becomes practical.
Once the transistors are completed, millions of capacitors are often added to make dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM. The capacitors used for DRAM have lately become so small that manufacturing engineers are experiencing the same kinds of problems they encounter in fashioning transistor gates. Indeed, here the problems are even more urgent, and the answer,
again, appears to be atomic-layer deposition, which was adopted for the production of the latest generation of DRAM chips.
New Meets Old
Atomic-layer deposition can also help in the next phase of chip manufacture, hooking everything together. The procedure is to first lay down an insulating layer of glass on which a pattern of lines is printed and etched. The grooves are then filled with metal to form the wires. These steps are repeated to create six to eight layers of crisscrossing interconnections. Although the semiconductor industry has traditionally used aluminum for this bevy of wires, in recent
years it has shifted to copper, which allows the chips to operate faster and helps to maintain signal integrity. The problem is that copper contaminates the junctions, so a thin conductive barrier (one that does not slow the chip down) needs to be placed below it. The solution was atomic-layer deposition.
The switch to copper also proved challenging for another reason: laying down copper is inherently tricky. Many high-tech approaches were attempted, but none worked well. Then, out of frustration, engineers at IBM tried an old-fashioned method: electroplating, which leaves an uneven surface and has to be followed with mechanical polishing. At the time, the thought of polishing a wafer--that is, introducing an abrasive grit--was anathema to managers in this industry, which is downright obsessed with cleanliness. Hence, the engineers who originally experimented with this approach at IBM did so without seeking
permission from their supervisor. They were delighted to discover that the polishing made the wafer more amenable to lithographic patterning (because the projection equipment has a limited depth of focus), that it removed troublesome defects from the surface and that it made it easier to deposit films for subsequent processing steps.
The lesson to be learned here is that seemingly antiquated methods can be just as valuable as cutting-edge techniques. Indeed, the semiconductor industry has benefited a great deal in recent years from combinations of old and new. That it has advanced as far as it has is a testament to the ingenious ability of countless scientists and engineers to continually refine the basic method of chip manufacture, which is now more than four decades old.
Will the procedures used for fabricating electronic devices four decades down the road look anything like those currently employed? Although some futurists would argue that exotic forms of nanotechnology will revolutionize electronics by midcentury, I'm betting that the semiconductor industry remains pretty much intact, having by then carried out another dazzling series of incremental technical advances, ones that are today beyond anyone's imagination.
As scientists and engineers continue to push back the limits of chipmaking technology, they have quietly entered into the nanometer realm!
Article By : G. Dan Hutcheson
Abstracted By: Dharmesh Tripathi
Overview/Faster, Better Chips
For most people, the notion of harnessing nanotechnology for electronic circuitry suggests something wildly futuristic. In fact, if you have used a personal computer made in the past few years, your work was most likely processed by semiconductors built with nanometer-scale features. These immensely sophisticated microchips or rather, nanochips are now manufactured by the millions, yet the scientists and engineers responsible for their development receive little recognition.
The recent strides are certainly impressive, but, you might ask, is semiconductor manufacture really nanotechnology? Indeed it is. After all, the most widely accepted definition of that word applies to something with dimensions smaller than 100 nanometers, and the first transistor gates under this mark went into production in 2000. Integrated circuits coming to market now have gates that are a scant 50 nanometers wide. That's 50 billionths of a meter, about a thousandth the width of a human hair.
Having such minuscule components conveniently allows one to stuff a lot into a compact package, but saving space per se is not the impetus behind the push for extreme miniaturization. The reason to make things small is that it lowers the unit cost for each transistor. As a bonus, this overall miniaturization shrinks the size of the gates, which are the parts of the transistors that switch between blocking electric current and allowing it to pass. The more narrow the gates, the faster the transistors can turn on and off, thereby raising the speed limits for the circuits using them. So as microprocessors gain more transistors, they also gain more speed.
The desire for boosting the number of transistors on a chip and for running it faster explains why the semiconductor industry, just as it crossed into the new millennium, shifted from manufacturing microchips to making nanochips. How it
quietly passed this milestone, and how it continues to advance, is an amazing story of people overcoming some of the greatest engineering challenges of our time.
Straining to Accelerate
The microprocessor that powers the computer on which I typed this text, a Pentium 4, contains some 42 million transistors intricately wired together. How in the world was this marvel of engineering constructed? Let us survey the steps.
Before the chipmaking process even begins, one needs to obtain a large crystal of pure silicon. The traditional method for doing so is to grow it from a small seed crystal that is immersed in a batch of molten silicon. This process yields a
cylindrical ingot--a massive gem-quality crystal--from which many thin wafers are then cut.
It turns out that such single-crystal ingots are no longer good enough for the job: they have too many "defects," dislocations in the atomic lattice that hamper the silicon's ability to conduct and otherwise cause trouble during chip
manufacture. So chipmakers now routinely deposit a thin, defect-free layer of single-crystal silicon on top of each wafer by exposing it to a gas containing silicon. This technique improves the speed of the transistors, but engineers have been pushing hard to do even better using something called silicon-on-insulator technology, which involves putting a thin layer of insulating oxide slightly below the surface of the wafer. Doing so lowers the capacitance (the ability to store electrical charge) between parts of the transistors and the underlying silicon substrate, capacitance that would otherwise sap speed and waste power. Adopting a silicon-on-insulator geometry can boost the rate at which the transistors can be made to switch on and off (or, alternatively, reduce the power needed) by up to 30 percent. The gain is equivalent to what one
gets in moving one generation ahead in feature size
IBM pioneered this technology and has been selling integrated circuits made with it for the past five years. The process IBM developed, dubbed SIMOX, short for separation by implantation of oxygen, was to bombard the silicon with oxygen atoms (or rather, oxygen ions, which have electrical charge and can thus be readily accelerated to high speeds). These ions implant themselves deep down, relatively speaking, where they combine with atoms in the wafer and form a layer of silicon dioxide.
One difficulty with this approach is that the passage of oxygen ions through the silicon creates many defects, so the surface has to be carefully heated afterward to mend disruptions to the crystal lattice. The greater problem is that oxygen implantation is inherently slow, which makes it costly. Hence, IBM reserved its silicon-on-insulator technology for its most expensive chips.
A new, faster method for accomplishing the same thing is, however, gaining ground. The idea is to first form an insulating oxide layer directly on top of a silicon wafer. One then flips the oxidized surface over and attaches it onto another, untreated wafer. After cleverly pruning off most of the silicon above the oxide layer, one ends up with the desired arrangement: a thin stratum of silicon on top of the insulating oxide layer on top of a bulk piece of silicon, which just provides physical support.
The never-ending push to boost the switching speed of transistors has also brought another very basic change to the foundations of chip manufacture, something called strained silicon. It turns out that forcing the crystal lattice of silicon to stretch slightly (by about 1 percent) increases the mobility of electrons passing through it considerably, which in turn allows the transistors built on it to operate faster. Chipmakers induce strain in silicon by bonding it to another
crystalline material--in this case, a silicon-germanium blend--for which the lattice spacing is greater. Although the technical details of how this strategy is being employed remain closely held, it is well known that many manufacturers are adopting this approach. Intel, for example, is using strained silicon in an advanced version of its Pentium 4 processor called Prescott, which began selling late last year.
Honey, I Shrunk the Features
Advances in the engineering of the silicon substrate are only part of the story: the design of the transistors constructed atop the silicon has also improved tremendously in recent years. One of the first steps in the fabrication of transistors on a digital chip is growing a thin layer of silicon dioxide on the surface of a wafer, which is done by exposing it to oxygen and water vapor, allowing the silicon, in a sense, to rust (oxidize). But unlike what happens to the steel body of an old car, the oxide does not crumble away from the surface. Instead it clings firmly, and oxygen atoms required for further oxidization must diffuse through the oxide coating to reach fresh silicon underneath. The regularity of this diffusion provides chipmakers with a way to control the thickness of the oxide layers they create.
Semiconductor manufacturers face daunting challenges as they move to extreme ultraviolet lithography, which reduces the wavelengths (and thus the size of the features that can be printed) by an order of magnitude. The prototype systems built so far are configured for a 13-nanometer wavelength. They are truly marvels of engineering--on both macroscales and nanoscales.
Take, for instance, the equipment needed to project images onto wafers. Because all materials absorb strongly at extreme ultraviolet wavelengths, these cameras cannot employ lenses, which would be essentially opaque. Instead the projectors must use rather sophisticated mirrors. For the same reason, the masks must be quite different from the glass screens used in conventional lithography. Extreme ultraviolet work demands masks that absorb and reflect light. To construct them, dozens of layers of molybdenum and silicon are laid down, each just a few nanometers thick. Doing so produces a highly reflective
surface onto which a patterned layer of chromium is applied to absorb light in just the appropriate places.
As with other aspects of chipmaking, these masks must be free from imperfections. But because the wavelengths are so small, probing for defects proves a considerable challenge. Scientists and engineers from industry, academe and government laboratories from across the U.S. and Europe are collaboratively seeking solutions to this and other technical hurdles that must be overcome before extreme ultraviolet lithography becomes practical.
Once the transistors are completed, millions of capacitors are often added to make dynamic random-access memory, or DRAM. The capacitors used for DRAM have lately become so small that manufacturing engineers are experiencing the same kinds of problems they encounter in fashioning transistor gates. Indeed, here the problems are even more urgent, and the answer,
again, appears to be atomic-layer deposition, which was adopted for the production of the latest generation of DRAM chips.
New Meets Old
Atomic-layer deposition can also help in the next phase of chip manufacture, hooking everything together. The procedure is to first lay down an insulating layer of glass on which a pattern of lines is printed and etched. The grooves are then filled with metal to form the wires. These steps are repeated to create six to eight layers of crisscrossing interconnections. Although the semiconductor industry has traditionally used aluminum for this bevy of wires, in recent
years it has shifted to copper, which allows the chips to operate faster and helps to maintain signal integrity. The problem is that copper contaminates the junctions, so a thin conductive barrier (one that does not slow the chip down) needs to be placed below it. The solution was atomic-layer deposition.
The switch to copper also proved challenging for another reason: laying down copper is inherently tricky. Many high-tech approaches were attempted, but none worked well. Then, out of frustration, engineers at IBM tried an old-fashioned method: electroplating, which leaves an uneven surface and has to be followed with mechanical polishing. At the time, the thought of polishing a wafer--that is, introducing an abrasive grit--was anathema to managers in this industry, which is downright obsessed with cleanliness. Hence, the engineers who originally experimented with this approach at IBM did so without seeking
permission from their supervisor. They were delighted to discover that the polishing made the wafer more amenable to lithographic patterning (because the projection equipment has a limited depth of focus), that it removed troublesome defects from the surface and that it made it easier to deposit films for subsequent processing steps.
The lesson to be learned here is that seemingly antiquated methods can be just as valuable as cutting-edge techniques. Indeed, the semiconductor industry has benefited a great deal in recent years from combinations of old and new. That it has advanced as far as it has is a testament to the ingenious ability of countless scientists and engineers to continually refine the basic method of chip manufacture, which is now more than four decades old.
Will the procedures used for fabricating electronic devices four decades down the road look anything like those currently employed? Although some futurists would argue that exotic forms of nanotechnology will revolutionize electronics by midcentury, I'm betting that the semiconductor industry remains pretty much intact, having by then carried out another dazzling series of incremental technical advances, ones that are today beyond anyone's imagination.
Tuesday, February 08, 2005
Happiness and depression are supposed to be a state of mind right? We have control over how we feel. So am I letting myself feel depressed? I let myself feel that way a lot. I'm 24 years old and I'm nowhere near feeling secure about myself. A lot of others my age are well settled, have jobs and are happy. Or at least are happier in whatever state they are in. I lived in gujarat with my parents for 17 years. I lived a very sheltered and protected life. All of sudden I am 1500 miles away from home. I miss my room, my bed, my parents , my brother, my friendss..the familiar surroundings near my home, the people. Here in bangalore I haven't found my niche. Even in my cubicle inside my office, I feel like an outsider. Well enough of about me...life goes on.
Wednesday, February 02, 2005
I might be sounding a little philosophical or poetical to you , whatever u call it after u read my todays post..But well actually its somethng going on in the life of a friend of mine. My friend , Daniel , fell in love with a white girl called leena somewhere from poland , i dont know the exact location.But one thing is definitely for sure that there's nothing that can't be conquered with love on your side. No matter what it is. Love is neither brown nor white. It has no boundaries or rules. Live and learn by it .Lets not forget our hero , Daniel, in this love philosophy :) .Daniel actually feared that lena would'nt love him because she was white and he was brown. So daniel called up her mother one day and asked her that why was it so that he was brown and lena was white. His mother could understand daniel's problem and she replied that while god was making lena, it was summer and the sun was shining very brightly and he asked daniel to face the sun and protect lena from it.And so he was brown and lena was white.she also said that though he was brown, his heart was white and pure and when the white girl looks into his heart she will start loving him. Hearing this from his mommy Daniel was really happy.Well...I really dont know what happened after this , will have to get the updates from daniel. Keep reading my blogs to know the later part of the story.
Saturday, January 29, 2005
My Job responsibilities :
I remember the day as if it were yesterday , when i completed my engineering in Computer Science, amnd joined into Patni Computer Systems as a software engineer.At Patni , I was working for a U.S clent company , General Electric, for its credit cards and consumer finance business , and I had developed a GUI based application for its customer care application of credit card customers. Success on this project gave me the confodence to work on real life problems. although I liked the job , software development at PCS Ltd , was more of a suppport function. I therefore switched to IBM Global Services (I) Pvt Ltd , a multinational company providing software solutions in wide ranging fields , telecommunications being its forte . At IBM , I have ben involved in Project Vodafone , an australian , an australian telecomm's new front end system providing intelligent billing serveices to its customer service system. Working on this project has helped me to hone my programming skills on real life applications. During my tenure in the software industry I have discovered leadership skills in myself , and frequently assisted colleagues . I posses industry -hardened skillsin software management and processes management , but I must build on these to achieve my goals of ubdertaking cutting - edge knowledge in software enterprise managemant . I therefore believe that i must enter into the academic world alongwith my job for further growth .
The movement towards a global economy and unprecented explosion of software trade and outsourcing worldwide has brought about immense oppurtunities to develop newer techlnologies , tools and methodologies in the field of Software enterprise Management .It is this challenging enviornment to which I intend to contribute by evolving meaningful and optimal solutions to various problems of software enterprises and trades . Thus , my goal is a career in management in software enterprises and / or information systems . wherein I could advance the analytical approaches I posses to information systes or software enterprise management . To achieve my career goals , I need to learn much more about current developments and techniques in softwares, softwares markets and software applications and also acquire a hands on experience of software enterprise analysis . A managament degree from a b - school will rpovide me with theoretical understanding , an in depth idea of practical approaches in aiding managerial decision-making and skills to enable me to develop an expertise in the core areas of software enterprisestrategies and global corporate software business operations.
The movement towards a global economy and unprecented explosion of software trade and outsourcing worldwide has brought about immense oppurtunities to develop newer techlnologies , tools and methodologies in the field of Software enterprise Management .It is this challenging enviornment to which I intend to contribute by evolving meaningful and optimal solutions to various problems of software enterprises and trades . Thus , my goal is a career in management in software enterprises and / or information systems . wherein I could advance the analytical approaches I posses to information systes or software enterprise management . To achieve my career goals , I need to learn much more about current developments and techniques in softwares, softwares markets and software applications and also acquire a hands on experience of software enterprise analysis . A managament degree from a b - school will rpovide me with theoretical understanding , an in depth idea of practical approaches in aiding managerial decision-making and skills to enable me to develop an expertise in the core areas of software enterprisestrategies and global corporate software business operations.
Friday, January 28, 2005
some more kudos to my home town...: ) Badohi carpet industry gears up to face global competition
Well , its regarding a place called badohi, a small hamlet in Eastern Uttar Pradesh, where my dad was born, the art of carpet weaving is going their for ages and has made its mark in the global market giving really very hard competetion to the world .
With Indian carpets facing tough competition from global players, the Indian Institute of Carpet Technology (IICT) in Badohi is imparting training on better designing techniques. Carpet weaving in the country is largely influenced by the Persian style. The Institute has taken up the initiative to design better carpets to face the competition. K.K. Goswami, Director of the Institute, said that Indian carpets need a better marketing strategy. "Carpet designing began in Persia and so it has a Persian stamp till now. Though we have created a niche of our own, yet it is sold carrying a tag of being Indo-Persian. They have such a strong image. Though we are good, we do not have the same kind of identity and publicity," Goswami said. The Institute aims at promoting Indian designs and traditional patterns so that they can create an identity of their own in the international market. "We basically try to focus on Indian themes for our design. Indian designs like Harappa, Ajanta, Mughal paintings, we try to take from them and teach the same to our students. We pay heed to colours too, based on market interest," said Kailashish Karamakar, a lecturer in the Institute. UP is the country's largest exporter of designer carpets and rugs. There are about 300 well-established carpet exporters in Mirzapur, Bhadohi areas in the state alone. Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana are the other states where carpet industry has high concentration. The origin of the industry can be traced back to 16th century to the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar who is said to have brought some Persian carpet weavers for production of Persian carpets in his own palace at northern Agra. Some of the most exclusive carpets were created during the Mughal era, each carpet was different from the other, but infused with a common magic of colour and designs.
Well if my readers are swiss , then please click on the following link to get the most of this post (http://www.letemps.ch/tour/reportages/etape4/jour75.html ).
With Indian carpets facing tough competition from global players, the Indian Institute of Carpet Technology (IICT) in Badohi is imparting training on better designing techniques. Carpet weaving in the country is largely influenced by the Persian style. The Institute has taken up the initiative to design better carpets to face the competition. K.K. Goswami, Director of the Institute, said that Indian carpets need a better marketing strategy. "Carpet designing began in Persia and so it has a Persian stamp till now. Though we have created a niche of our own, yet it is sold carrying a tag of being Indo-Persian. They have such a strong image. Though we are good, we do not have the same kind of identity and publicity," Goswami said. The Institute aims at promoting Indian designs and traditional patterns so that they can create an identity of their own in the international market. "We basically try to focus on Indian themes for our design. Indian designs like Harappa, Ajanta, Mughal paintings, we try to take from them and teach the same to our students. We pay heed to colours too, based on market interest," said Kailashish Karamakar, a lecturer in the Institute. UP is the country's largest exporter of designer carpets and rugs. There are about 300 well-established carpet exporters in Mirzapur, Bhadohi areas in the state alone. Jammu and Kashmir, Rajasthan, Punjab and Haryana are the other states where carpet industry has high concentration. The origin of the industry can be traced back to 16th century to the reign of Mughal Emperor Akbar who is said to have brought some Persian carpet weavers for production of Persian carpets in his own palace at northern Agra. Some of the most exclusive carpets were created during the Mughal era, each carpet was different from the other, but infused with a common magic of colour and designs.
Well if my readers are swiss , then please click on the following link to get the most of this post (http://www.letemps.ch/tour/reportages/etape4/jour75.html ).
Tuesday, January 25, 2005
Telugu Desam party minister got murdered...........
Police on Tuesday lodged an FIR against Jagan Mohan Reddy, son of Andhra Pradesh chief minister YSR Reddy, for the murder of TDP MLA Paritala Ravi.
The FIR was filed against six persons even as the day-long statewide bandh called by TDP to protest Paritala's killing took violent turn in some districts of Andhra Pradesh with party activists torching a Mandal Revenue Office, besides blocking road and rail traffic at several places. The activists set afire Kambaduru Mandal Revenue Office (MRO) in Prakasam district in the early hours of Tuesday as protestors were seen moving on the roads shouting anti-government slogans, police said. A report from Ongole said TDP activists manhandled an MRO official when he was sitting in his office. The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) administration as a precautionary measure withdrew its bus services which were the main targets of protestors' fury in many parts of the state, official sources said. The protestors blocked rail traffic at Machlipatnam railway station and detained Vijayawada Passenger Train for about an hour, while Vijayawada Satavahana Express was blocked by the agitators for about 20 minutes. In the state capital, shops and business establishments remained close while banks and other government offices were functioning with skeleton staff. As a precautionary measure the state government had imposed 24 hours curfew in Anantapur town and district headquarters. Meanwhile, former Chief Minister and TDP President N Chandrababu Naidu alongwith his party leaders left by road to Anantpur to participate in the funeral of Ravi at his native place Venkatapuram.
The FIR was filed against six persons even as the day-long statewide bandh called by TDP to protest Paritala's killing took violent turn in some districts of Andhra Pradesh with party activists torching a Mandal Revenue Office, besides blocking road and rail traffic at several places. The activists set afire Kambaduru Mandal Revenue Office (MRO) in Prakasam district in the early hours of Tuesday as protestors were seen moving on the roads shouting anti-government slogans, police said. A report from Ongole said TDP activists manhandled an MRO official when he was sitting in his office. The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) administration as a precautionary measure withdrew its bus services which were the main targets of protestors' fury in many parts of the state, official sources said. The protestors blocked rail traffic at Machlipatnam railway station and detained Vijayawada Passenger Train for about an hour, while Vijayawada Satavahana Express was blocked by the agitators for about 20 minutes. In the state capital, shops and business establishments remained close while banks and other government offices were functioning with skeleton staff. As a precautionary measure the state government had imposed 24 hours curfew in Anantapur town and district headquarters. Meanwhile, former Chief Minister and TDP President N Chandrababu Naidu alongwith his party leaders left by road to Anantpur to participate in the funeral of Ravi at his native place Venkatapuram.
Friday, January 21, 2005
Two and a half years ago, my employer required me to take an oath of loyalty while raising my right hand. May I never have a job that asks me for any less. There is something utterly satisfying in relinquishing oneself that way. Knowing that you are part of something greater than yourself whose traditions will echo through time long after you have passed. Someone asked me the other day what it is that makes me happy. Days later I have come to realize that what makes me happiest, is returning to the cause implanted inside the nether regions of my soul. Something I believe in so strongly that I would swear an oath of loyalty...and much more, to it. Without my cause I am ill-defined at best and superfluous at worst. Last month I was in danger of losing my job. Losing my job would have been a temporary set-back but not the end of my plans. When you stalk a prize for close to three decades, you become suspicious when things remain at a status quo for too long. This morning I was told that for now my job is safe, but an explanation of what I am currently doing and what my future intentions are is needed. What the hell am I doing?? Fatigue had set in. Decades of pursuit without guaranteed prey can dull one's senses. Oaths get drowned by instant gratification and material pursuits. And so I sat down an composed a letter. I wrote to my new boss, whom I have never met, and explained to him what my intentions are and what I am doing. He of all people can surely understand? I needed this kick in the pants. I needed to be reminded of my oath to my employer and of my higher oath. Focus. Eyes on the prize.
Thursday, January 13, 2005
Review of Chetan bhagat's 5 point some1...
Umm...well i cant really figure out what audience chetan had in mind when inking this book. The book has little to do with iit or to put in a better way, it has very little of what iit is all about. He could have as well used any other college as setup just ensuring that this college had relative grading sytem, was tough and had discipline. And well that is indeed a very narrow perspective of what iit is. It doesent talk about interhostel rivalry, extra- curricular activities, politics, socials, massive rendezvous, final year turmoils, and the now present internet connection in every hostel room (that had transformed student life at iit like anything)...nothing that would actually differentiate iit from other colleges. So be assured for once that this book is not about iit. So is it about underperformers? To some extent but it doesnt seem to give any cogent arguments for their underperformance, infact it doesnt infact care to dwell into it at all.
So if you are an alumni and intend to read this book to recall your iitd days or an aspirant who is curious to know about life at iit then in either cases, you'll be terribly dissapointed. the book is maybe a little more about friendship and romance then anything else. Chetan has really done a wonderful job in capturing this part. Many of my fellow colleagues who are iitians
( i still regret that i was'nt one of em....) and who have read the book are head over heals in love with the fictious neha cherian. So much so that they were uncomfortable why hari had to end up having sex with her.
The characters precisely map to the characters of dil chahta hai. Aamir-Ryan, Akshay-Alok, Saif-Hari and Preity-Neha. The differnce being that unlike in dil chata hai, here characters differ in their approach on academics instead of love.
At book launch, Chetan claimed that he is the hari in book. He has tried to use self-humility throughout the book to establish a connect. You know, self humilty charms like anything...TRP raitings of jassi jaisee koi nahi should be evidence enough.
The first 14 chapters of book are really cute. There is this very interesting concept in the book. Each of the three out of the four central characters in the book have a chapter devoted to themseves where they put their perspective on the way things are or why things are the way they are. The fourth character is the author for the rest of book. These chapters are particularly very sweet and cute. Each of the characters cribbing about how hari had been biased in the rest of the book, giving their own justifications. Infact one of the cahracteras said he cant take too much liberty even in his chapter cos hari might edit it. But despite that the book lacks perspective. Its as other charactes in book insist Hari's (chetan's) very narrow perspective on iit and life. I really doubt if majority of iit males would romance with a girl just for geting physical. Chetan has potrayed all 9 pointers as nerds. While that may be true for some but i think that some of the coolest guys around are 8 pointers. Its again hard to believe that someone studying regularly for 3hours a day is 5 pointer if he is really studying...... You study 3 hours a day and you need to be really dumb to get anything less than 7.5 particularly if you are in mechanical.
Actually half way thru book, thats chapter 14, i was disapointed why only just 130 more pages are left, there should have been more. But well 15-20 pages more and i was cursing the enormous number of pages still left. While the first half went into defining characters, their aspirations and problems and maintanied a slow and steady pace, the latter part was just pure fiction too diffciult to digest particularly given the iit setup. Imagine a iit student making out with a prof's daughter in prof's house!! Imagine a student falling from 9th floor of MS building and still surviving. Was Chetan trying to crack a joke when he justified saying the guy survived th fall bcos of his fat fleshy butt and 6 inches of water on floor!!!
At many places, there are sudden transition in the attitude of characters for for no apparent reason. Some incoherency too like ryan getting a scooter in middle of first sem at christmas! At iit, first sem is over much before christmas. Again ryan gets a scotter after they already went to see terminator on his scooter. Hari finding cooler at dhaba comfortable in midst of winters. But i guess all this can be pardoned.
So what i am trying to say is that though this book (atleast the first 15 chpas) are real cute and might give you a faint flavor of the hardships at iit BUT it is a very narrow, incomplete perspective of a very small aspect of iit. So read it as pure fiction and do not, i request DO NOT conclude or infer anything about iitians or 5-6-7-8-9 pointers from this book.
I felt so wasted at the end of the book, i mean what was the book trying to tell? Damn it, why did you associate name of iit with it. I mean there are atleast 5000 mis-informed people around if it has actually sold 5000 copies that is.
ABOUT CHETAN (what he actually did at IIT):
He made and still holds these two records at IIT:
Sent a stainless steel glass flying high in air for 7 seconds using a diwali cracker.
Blew four bubbles simultaneously while chewing buble gum, each 3 inches in diameter.
Source: BSP (board for students publication, iit delhi) book of records 1995)
So if you are an alumni and intend to read this book to recall your iitd days or an aspirant who is curious to know about life at iit then in either cases, you'll be terribly dissapointed. the book is maybe a little more about friendship and romance then anything else. Chetan has really done a wonderful job in capturing this part. Many of my fellow colleagues who are iitians
( i still regret that i was'nt one of em....) and who have read the book are head over heals in love with the fictious neha cherian. So much so that they were uncomfortable why hari had to end up having sex with her.
The characters precisely map to the characters of dil chahta hai. Aamir-Ryan, Akshay-Alok, Saif-Hari and Preity-Neha. The differnce being that unlike in dil chata hai, here characters differ in their approach on academics instead of love.
At book launch, Chetan claimed that he is the hari in book. He has tried to use self-humility throughout the book to establish a connect. You know, self humilty charms like anything...TRP raitings of jassi jaisee koi nahi should be evidence enough.
The first 14 chapters of book are really cute. There is this very interesting concept in the book. Each of the three out of the four central characters in the book have a chapter devoted to themseves where they put their perspective on the way things are or why things are the way they are. The fourth character is the author for the rest of book. These chapters are particularly very sweet and cute. Each of the characters cribbing about how hari had been biased in the rest of the book, giving their own justifications. Infact one of the cahracteras said he cant take too much liberty even in his chapter cos hari might edit it. But despite that the book lacks perspective. Its as other charactes in book insist Hari's (chetan's) very narrow perspective on iit and life. I really doubt if majority of iit males would romance with a girl just for geting physical. Chetan has potrayed all 9 pointers as nerds. While that may be true for some but i think that some of the coolest guys around are 8 pointers. Its again hard to believe that someone studying regularly for 3hours a day is 5 pointer if he is really studying...... You study 3 hours a day and you need to be really dumb to get anything less than 7.5 particularly if you are in mechanical.
Actually half way thru book, thats chapter 14, i was disapointed why only just 130 more pages are left, there should have been more. But well 15-20 pages more and i was cursing the enormous number of pages still left. While the first half went into defining characters, their aspirations and problems and maintanied a slow and steady pace, the latter part was just pure fiction too diffciult to digest particularly given the iit setup. Imagine a iit student making out with a prof's daughter in prof's house!! Imagine a student falling from 9th floor of MS building and still surviving. Was Chetan trying to crack a joke when he justified saying the guy survived th fall bcos of his fat fleshy butt and 6 inches of water on floor!!!
At many places, there are sudden transition in the attitude of characters for for no apparent reason. Some incoherency too like ryan getting a scooter in middle of first sem at christmas! At iit, first sem is over much before christmas. Again ryan gets a scotter after they already went to see terminator on his scooter. Hari finding cooler at dhaba comfortable in midst of winters. But i guess all this can be pardoned.
So what i am trying to say is that though this book (atleast the first 15 chpas) are real cute and might give you a faint flavor of the hardships at iit BUT it is a very narrow, incomplete perspective of a very small aspect of iit. So read it as pure fiction and do not, i request DO NOT conclude or infer anything about iitians or 5-6-7-8-9 pointers from this book.
I felt so wasted at the end of the book, i mean what was the book trying to tell? Damn it, why did you associate name of iit with it. I mean there are atleast 5000 mis-informed people around if it has actually sold 5000 copies that is.
ABOUT CHETAN (what he actually did at IIT):
He made and still holds these two records at IIT:
Sent a stainless steel glass flying high in air for 7 seconds using a diwali cracker.
Blew four bubbles simultaneously while chewing buble gum, each 3 inches in diameter.
Source: BSP (board for students publication, iit delhi) book of records 1995)
Wednesday, January 12, 2005
Sometimes people need more than monetary helps..
I fashioned what I thought to be a great business idea a few days ago. It came to me in a flash of pain after I slipped on my bathroom floor and hit my head against the toilet. However, after days of smug bliss I came to realize that the business model behind my brilliant idea...sucked, AND I had no implementation strategy. I never went to business school and I failed to grasp the importance of learning those basic skills that every corporate suit possesses ( Well i hope some day my dream to get into a B school gets fulfilled ... ). My idea was to create a "Sorrow Bank." It was to be modeled after the tried-and-true Blood Bank. The way I look at it, every time a tragedy hits the world everyone is looking to donate food, medicine, and money, but no one has come up with a way to relieve the internal suffering of each of those souls. Take this tsunami for instance. I watch the television and listen to the news channels and I keep hearing these stories where someone’s whole family has been wiped out. When a person is in a car accident you can always hook them up to a volunteer who wants to donate blood. My idea was to work in reverse of this. A bunch of happy-go-lucky volunteers would line up around the block waiting to have sorrow pumped INTO them via a machine that would be powered by something like...a flux capacitor. True, the happy people would walk away feelin' miserable, but at least the tormented people would feel better. I think that I could handle a much greater share of misery if it would help balance things out. Eventually, it was the fact that my idea has no scientific foundation and zero profit margin potential that did me in.
Monday, January 10, 2005
The weekend ends :(
The weather out here is foul, but not as foul as my mood. Banglore has really got very cold nights , my plans to work out in the mornings are failing as it is chilling cold here . Bad news is coming my way. I can feel it gathering with malice. Monday is going to be a really bad day. Which is worse: being surprised with bad news or knowing that it is hunting you like a hungry wolf hunts a sheep in an open field?
Thursday, January 06, 2005
Some hidden facts about Madhubani
Hindu women who live in villages near the market town of Madhubani in northern India maintain old traditions and teach them to their daughters. Painting is one of the traditional skills that is passed down from generation to generation in the families of some of the women. They paint figures from nature and myth on household and village walls to mark the seasonal festivals of the religious year, for special events of the life-cycle, and when marriages are being arranged they prepare intricately designed wedding proposals.
But even though women in the villages around Madhubani have been practicing their folk art for centuries, the world at large has come to know about these women and to consider them to be "artists" only in the last thirty years. Even now, most of their work remains anonymous. The women, some of them illiterate, are in any case reluctant to consider themselves individual producers of "works of art" and only a few of them mark the paintings with their own name.
Among the first modern outsiders to document the tradition of Madhubani painting were William and Mildred Archer. He was a British civil servant assigned to the district during the colonial era. The Archers obtained some drawings on paper that the women painters were using as aids to memory. Works that the Archers collected went to the India Records Office in London (now part of the British Library) where a small number of specialists could study them as creative instances of India's folk art.
What led the women painters to share their work with the larger world was a major ecological and economic crisis that resulted from a prolonged drought in 1966-68 that struck Madhubani and the surrounding region of Mithila. In order to create a new source of non-agricultural income, the All-India Handicrafts Board encouraged the women artists to produce their traditional paintings on handmade paper for commercial sale.
Since then, painting has become a primary source of income for scores of families. Production and initial marketing have been regulated by regional craft guilds, the state government of Bihar, and the Government of India. But the continuing market in this art throughout the world is a tribute to the resourcefulness of the women of Mithila who have successfully transferred their techniques of bhitti chitra or wall-painting to the medium of paper, and have resisted the temptation to adapt their traditional designs too freely in pursuit of unpredictable public tastes.
As the map indicates, the Mithila region and the villages around Madhubani are situated near the northern edge of the state of Bihar as it approaches the India-Nepal border. People of Mithila have their own language and a sense of regional identity that goes back more than 2500 years. Among the most celebrated figures believed to have been born in the region are Mahavira (a great spiritual hero of the Jain religion), Siddhartha Gautama (better known to the world as the Buddha), and Sita (the legendary wife of Prince Rama and herself a central figure in what may be the world's most popular epic, the Ramayana).
Commercialization of the folk art has been a mixed blessing. It has been regulated by governmental bureaucracies, has generated a multi-levelled distribution system, and has put a premium on productivity per se -- independent of any meaningful connection to the traditional cycles of village life and the rhythms of the religious year. But it also has allowed people around the world to discover a style of art with a long heritage linked to the lives of women, and that retains evident signs of its rootedness in a vital folk tradition. And, more to the point, it has created a new source of gainful employment in rural India for women and their families.
The exhibited paintings include examples of several themes in the representational but stylized and symbolic Madhubani tradition -- the great life-cycle rite of marriage; some of the major goddesses and gods of the Hindu pantheon; domesticated and wild animals. The earliest of the paintings (the Goddess Durga, matted in blue) dates from 1969, when only a few women artists had demonstrated their willingness and ability to work extensively with the medium of paper, and the most recent from 1993.
The paintings are from a small teaching-collection assembled by Gene R. Thursby who first went to India in 1968 as a Fulbright Fellow and returned to the United States in 1970 to join the faculty of the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. Over the years since then, he has gone back to India for shorter stays in order to continue his research on modern religious movements. The exhibit offers an occasion to teach simply by sharing the opportunity to experience the delight that any of these paintings can awaken. "One might at first believe that a knowledge of India's complex history and religions would be a prerequisite for an appreciation of the creations of Indian culture, " R. C. Craven conceded toward the end of his Concise History of Indian Art, but then he confirmed that his own view of the matter was "that the vitality and directness of Indian art make it accessible to all and no knowledge other than that basic to all humanity is needed."
Why give special encouragment to people to consider -- even to contemplate -- forms of art that stay close to folk tradition? Roy Craven (in agreement with the earlier art historian and curator of the Boston Museum collection of Indian art, Ananda Coomarasamy) gave the best answer: "Throughout Indian history the great masses who lived in the villages have (in the words of Coomaraswamy) 'worshipped, not the abstract deities of priestly theology, but local genii (Yaksas and Nagas), and the feminine divinities of increase, and mother goddesses'. Down through time the forces of the soil have robustly spawned and fertilized the arts. In fact, the sophisticated and complex icons of Hinduism could never have been conceived and brought to fruition without the support of this rich and vital substructure."
This exhibit was organized for two main purposes. First, to honor the memory of Roy C. Craven who died in 1996. He was an art historian whose great enthusiasm for the artistic traditions of India continues to enrich the lives of his colleagues, his former students, and his many friends around the world. Second, to allow a wonderful tradition of women's painting to become better known to people around the world
But even though women in the villages around Madhubani have been practicing their folk art for centuries, the world at large has come to know about these women and to consider them to be "artists" only in the last thirty years. Even now, most of their work remains anonymous. The women, some of them illiterate, are in any case reluctant to consider themselves individual producers of "works of art" and only a few of them mark the paintings with their own name.
Among the first modern outsiders to document the tradition of Madhubani painting were William and Mildred Archer. He was a British civil servant assigned to the district during the colonial era. The Archers obtained some drawings on paper that the women painters were using as aids to memory. Works that the Archers collected went to the India Records Office in London (now part of the British Library) where a small number of specialists could study them as creative instances of India's folk art.
What led the women painters to share their work with the larger world was a major ecological and economic crisis that resulted from a prolonged drought in 1966-68 that struck Madhubani and the surrounding region of Mithila. In order to create a new source of non-agricultural income, the All-India Handicrafts Board encouraged the women artists to produce their traditional paintings on handmade paper for commercial sale.
Since then, painting has become a primary source of income for scores of families. Production and initial marketing have been regulated by regional craft guilds, the state government of Bihar, and the Government of India. But the continuing market in this art throughout the world is a tribute to the resourcefulness of the women of Mithila who have successfully transferred their techniques of bhitti chitra or wall-painting to the medium of paper, and have resisted the temptation to adapt their traditional designs too freely in pursuit of unpredictable public tastes.
As the map indicates, the Mithila region and the villages around Madhubani are situated near the northern edge of the state of Bihar as it approaches the India-Nepal border. People of Mithila have their own language and a sense of regional identity that goes back more than 2500 years. Among the most celebrated figures believed to have been born in the region are Mahavira (a great spiritual hero of the Jain religion), Siddhartha Gautama (better known to the world as the Buddha), and Sita (the legendary wife of Prince Rama and herself a central figure in what may be the world's most popular epic, the Ramayana).
Commercialization of the folk art has been a mixed blessing. It has been regulated by governmental bureaucracies, has generated a multi-levelled distribution system, and has put a premium on productivity per se -- independent of any meaningful connection to the traditional cycles of village life and the rhythms of the religious year. But it also has allowed people around the world to discover a style of art with a long heritage linked to the lives of women, and that retains evident signs of its rootedness in a vital folk tradition. And, more to the point, it has created a new source of gainful employment in rural India for women and their families.
The exhibited paintings include examples of several themes in the representational but stylized and symbolic Madhubani tradition -- the great life-cycle rite of marriage; some of the major goddesses and gods of the Hindu pantheon; domesticated and wild animals. The earliest of the paintings (the Goddess Durga, matted in blue) dates from 1969, when only a few women artists had demonstrated their willingness and ability to work extensively with the medium of paper, and the most recent from 1993.
The paintings are from a small teaching-collection assembled by Gene R. Thursby who first went to India in 1968 as a Fulbright Fellow and returned to the United States in 1970 to join the faculty of the Department of Religion at the University of Florida. Over the years since then, he has gone back to India for shorter stays in order to continue his research on modern religious movements. The exhibit offers an occasion to teach simply by sharing the opportunity to experience the delight that any of these paintings can awaken. "One might at first believe that a knowledge of India's complex history and religions would be a prerequisite for an appreciation of the creations of Indian culture, " R. C. Craven conceded toward the end of his Concise History of Indian Art, but then he confirmed that his own view of the matter was "that the vitality and directness of Indian art make it accessible to all and no knowledge other than that basic to all humanity is needed."
Why give special encouragment to people to consider -- even to contemplate -- forms of art that stay close to folk tradition? Roy Craven (in agreement with the earlier art historian and curator of the Boston Museum collection of Indian art, Ananda Coomarasamy) gave the best answer: "Throughout Indian history the great masses who lived in the villages have (in the words of Coomaraswamy) 'worshipped, not the abstract deities of priestly theology, but local genii (Yaksas and Nagas), and the feminine divinities of increase, and mother goddesses'. Down through time the forces of the soil have robustly spawned and fertilized the arts. In fact, the sophisticated and complex icons of Hinduism could never have been conceived and brought to fruition without the support of this rich and vital substructure."
This exhibit was organized for two main purposes. First, to honor the memory of Roy C. Craven who died in 1996. He was an art historian whose great enthusiasm for the artistic traditions of India continues to enrich the lives of his colleagues, his former students, and his many friends around the world. Second, to allow a wonderful tradition of women's painting to become better known to people around the world
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